As we seniors wait patiently for our own jab, how sad to read of so many COVID vaccine queue jumpers.

Liam Thorp, a 32-year-old Brit with no underlying health conditions was offered a COVID vaccine early because of a data entry blunder by his GP. Thorp’s height had been entered as 6.2cm, rather than his actual 6ft 2in, giving him an astonishing body mass index of 28,000. That BMI, roughly 1,000 times higher than average, popped him into the morbidly obese category.

Feeling “uneasy” with so many vulnerable people yet to be vaccinated, Thorp rang his GP to ask if there had been a mistake. He was told he had been placed in priority group six because of his weight. Oh… OK then…

“Despite being on the chunky side, I wouldn’t have thought of myself as clinically obese (even after lockdown)”.

He was relieved when his apologetic GP called back the next day after discovering the source of the error.

“If I had been less stunned, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of these remarkable dimensions was slithering around south Liverpool.”

Or, as the Manchester Evening News put it: “Should they not have been in touch before to see how the man the size of a thumb was getting on?”

Said palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke: “This, for me, is the single best tweet of the entire pandemic, Liam. And may I please commend your decency in not exploiting your remarkable BMI to jump the queue?”

Amen!

(Source: < https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/18/6cm-tall-man-offered-covid-vaccine-after-nhs-blunder-liam-thorp >)